The present invention relates to a machine for vending or renting videocassettes and for accepting return of rented videocassettes. As used herein, "videocassettes" includes prerecorded or blank videocassettes or videodiscs.
With the proliferation of home videocassette recorders, there has also arisen a market for pre-recorded videocassettes for home viewing. Pre-recorded videocassettes can, of course, be purchased or rented at selected retail or rental outlets. However, pre-recorded videocassettes are expensive, and hence few stores maintain a large inventory in such expensive items, either for sale or rental. In addition, such stores are not necessarily conveniently located to a large segment of the public, and store hours may not be convenient. Accordingly, there is a need to provide a conveniently located vending machine from which a user can purchase or rent and return videocassettes at any time of day. For maximum customer convenience, it would be desirable if the customer's purchase or rental could be charged to a conventional credit card account.
A number of attempts have been made at providing such a machine. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,414,467 discloses a videocassette ordering terminal at which a user can preview or order a videocassette for rental. The terminal permits a customer to select a videocassette for rental and return the videocassette to the terminal at the end of the rental period. No provision is made for an outright purchase of a videocassette, however. The rental can be charged to the customer's credit card account. A major drawback of this machine is that, when a videocassette is returned to the terminal, it cannot be placed back "on the shelf" for another rental without the intervention of a human operator, who must restock the machine. Such a machine requires a large expenditure of time, and money, to keep it stocked. If it is not restocked frequently, its convenience, and hence customer appeal, is greatly reduced.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,458,802 is an attempt to solve the problem of how to automatically restock the machine. In this patent, a carousel arrangement is used in which a videocassette to be rented and returned is assigned to a particular compartment on the carousel. There is an exact one-to-one correspondence between the videocassette and the compartment. A videocassette to be rented is vended from that compartment and, upon return, is accepted back only into that compartment. This arrangement permits some restocking, but unnecessarily limits the number of videocassettes which can be conveniently stored in the machine.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a videocassette vending machine for selectively vending or renting and returning videocassettes which overcomes the problems associated with prior vending machines.